Prewar Bristol

A lot of newcomers ask us: "what was it like before the war began?", or "How was the city centre before it was ruined by the war?"

Well, the War on Motorists began over 25 years ago —and the city is still suffering under it. Before the war, you could drive from temple way over the rickety flyover, straight to the centre, then past the cathedral and out to the A4, with only a couple of traffic lights in your way. Not now.

Some of the history of pre-war Bristol is still there, if you know where to look. Redcliffe Way for example —have you noticed how wide it is? Or why the road from the Jacob's Wells Road roundabout to (what's left of) the Bristol library is wide, yet deserted. All distant memories of a city before the war.

Here, in our historical artifacts, we've found an A-Z map of Bristol from 1985, when the motorists were not yet under attack by a car-hating council.


Look at the subtle differences

1.  Castle Park is as it once was: parking. A large amount of its surface area was dedicated to medium to long stay parking for "Broadmead Shopping Precinct" —one of Britain's premier shopping areas. Now: stolen by greenery. And of course, there's a bike path. And look what happened to Broadmead —its decline is not a coincidence.
2. There's a road, "College Green", where now there is a park: "College Green". Newcomers just don't appreciate how wonderful it was to have a main road going past the cathedral entrance, between it and the council house —showing the council what mattered to Bristol: fast-moving cars. When Anchor Road was reworked in the early 1990s, it was designated the through road, and College Green taken from us; Dean Road becoming a cul-de-sac.  And of course, the park added a bike path. This was one of the first losses in the war —and possibly the greatest strategically. No longer did the council get to see a main road out their windows. And without that, they lost their way: they forgot what mattered.
3. Redcliffe Way goes all the way through to The Centre, via what is now known as "Queen's Square". That got captured by the tree-huggers at the turn of the century —who went out to plant trees to commemorate their victory. And of course, a bike path.
4. The infamous rickety flyover has gone. Nobody who has arrived in the last 15 years will ever appreciate the thrill of driving over that single lane flyover, wondering if today would be the day that it fell down. Stolen, replaced by a lights-controlled gyratory. And of course, a bike path.
5. Templemeads had a motorail terminal. Actually, this was news to us. Apparently you could drive onto a sleeper train and get to Scotland overnight. Of course, being able to drive up the M5, get stuck at Spaghetti Junction, crawl over Wolverhampton on the M6 and then eventually get to the A74 replaced that. And even now, with the M74 and new motorways round Glasgow, the speed enforcement on those motorways have made the journey worse.
6. The railway path doesn't exist. While they didn't steal our roads for that —they could have converted that old railway line into a new road, or at least extra parking. Instead: a route designed to encourage more law-breaking cyclists to come into the city.
7. The M32 ends at the "Allied Carpet and sex shops" junction, rather than the more convoluted "queue for Cabot Circus Parking" junction. Again, the addition of vast amounts of parking has made congestion worse on the M32. And, with more lights, pedestrian and cycle crossings.
8. Nine Tree hill is open to through traffic. This was the great partition of Kingsdown. Before then you could drive down Springfield road, cut through Ninetree Hill and make your way to Jamaica street —allowing you to get all the way from The Downs to the city centre without a traffic light. Not now —and by forcing everyone to drive down Whiteladies Road, St Michael's Hill or Arley Hill+ Cheltenham road, it only makes congestion worse. And again: there's a bike path on the roads they stole.
9. Prince Street Bridge. Two way, Closed to cars —possibly indefinitely.
10. Lots of the other little "P" areas have been taken away by offices and housing. And what have we got in exchange? Nothing but the multi-storey parking of The Galleries, the multi-storey parking of Cabot Circus, the underground parking at @Bristol and the vast amount of parking behind Temple meads. That's it.

You can see, then, the multipronged battles which we've been fighting —and losing— in the war on motorists. Those bits of red paint on the main roads aren't the real war, they are just the victory signs, the equivalent of unionist and nationalist kerb painting. No, the battles fought have been far more strategic

• The closure of the inner ring road, the replacement of College Green and Queen's Square's main roads with parkland and bike paths. And in doing so —increasing congestion on the remaining roads.
• The closure of important rat-runs, closures which partition whole parts of the city. And in doing so —increasing congestion on the remaining roads.
• The replacement of surface parking with multi-storey parking facilities. And in doing so: encouraging congestion.

This is what we are up against. And while it's easy to point to the current mayor and say "20 mph zones! RPZ zones!" and accuse him of conducting a war on motorists, those aren't the real war. Those are details in a conflict going back decades.

The BBC is on our side!

It's been a bad week for us, what with the Times going over to "the other side"

Yet we are pleased to see that the BBC came out on our side, with a report on Bristol.

Yes, it lights our bollards up. We see someone wearing a helmet and hi-viz to cycle along the segregated bit of Prince Street Bridge, the one where the only vehicle likely to hit you is a boat if you ignore the "bridge swing" signs -although there is always the ice cream van at the end.

Later on, we see the BBC Bollard Man on Park Row, where he then faults someone for not having lights on as they approach the centre. At that point you can be sure the reporter isn't local -if he were he'd fault her for trying to cycle over the centre with the goal of reaching the other end alive, though she may be appearing to turn right to head towards the Watershed. Either way: in need of criticism.

We also liked the viewer's emails to back up the theme that the real problems are the people trying to cycle round our city, with both the classic evening post comment themes surfacing

• Taxpayers money is wasted on cycle paths unless they are made to use them.
• Why don't cyclists stop at crossings?

Congratulations to the BBC to standing up to this menance, not considering whether the infamous Magnatom did actually have a helmet, bright clothing and the right of way when that HGV lorry nearly ran him over.

If they can't use the pavement, they jump the lights

When the politicians were in town, they blocked off the pavements to bicycles, and early on in the evening, Prince Street Bridge. We got complaints from some of the Southville folk, for which we say: if you had a car, rather than walked, it would have been less of an inconvenience. Therefore, no sympathy, not even a little bit. And don't say there's nowhere for you to park, we all know about the Coronation Road pretend bike lane, you have no excuses.

What the police did do, and for which we are grateful, is close off the pavements to bicycles. We would have hoped this would have been sufficient to stop them cycling, but no, one chose to use the bike crossing of Prince St Bridge. Only now, no pavement option afterwards. What does he do? He runs the red light, a few seconds before it actually changes.

Unfortunately for him, an Airport bus coming from The Grove is executing a turn, and also ignoring the red light which they must have seen, unless the lorry in front blocked their view.

The tax-dodging cyclist almost got clipped by the bus, and you can be sure the green party or some other bunch of troublemakers would have been blaming the real politicians for the death that would have resulted. And we drivers would have been held up.

Progress on Prince Street Bridge

Southville Parking posts us this lovely snap from this summer (Summer 2009 was a Tuesday in September, as you may recall), showing how part of the evolution of Prince Street Bridge is going on

A year ago: two lanes for cars, bikes and buses, narrow pavements on both sides. Then, change: the western side/northern direction was blocked off to be bike+pedestrian, while the other direction became alternating all-vehicles. This makes for some interesting options for tax-dodgers who insist on cycling.

Together with Forest Pines, Chris "known subversive" Hutt has shown that the long term plan is driven by Bus Rapid Transit; the eastern lane will have the pavement removed and the route made bus/bike only, despite the inconvenience this will be to the forthcoming 8000 Ashton Vale commuters and people who will discover that Tesco Sainsburys Southville is going to be the best supermarket the city has seen.

What's not been covered is how the rollout will be -will it be one big day when cars are banned from the bridge, and bikes are forced into the road, rather than the pavement? This picture answers the question.

The careful placement of an ice-cream van not only brings in revenue for those ice-cream vans who failed to win the Banksy franchise, it discourages bicycles from using the bike/pedestrian side, and so gets them used to it being taken away. As an added bonus, northbound cars awaiting the green light can buy some ice cream too.

Secret Plans of the WoEP

Here is a bit of Fig 2 on Page 4 of the Executive Summary of the BRT proposal for Ashton Gate, the one that is causing the Prince Street Bridge controversy -the one where it turns out the WoEP have been secretly planning to take one pavement and one lane of the bridge and ban bikes from the bikes+pedestrians area created last October.

Look at the route from the centre to Emerson's Green. That is the railway path. Have the same team that has been secretly planning to take over from a bridge, been planning to run buses down the BRT? Isn't that what they promised to stop doing last year? Well, I don't think we can trust them.

For anyone not involved in that struggle, remember that the WoEP had been secretly planning this for at least a year, made a commitment to focus on the railway path route not because it made economic sense, but because it would be less disruptive to cars. It wouldn't just remove a park from east bristol and destroy the best footpath and bike route in the inner city, it wouldn't solve the congestion problems in/out the M32, and be surprisingly useless. Yet this diagram, seemingly prepared in Jan 2009, shows it is still a dream of the WoEP.

And so it begins -again. Have they not learned their lesson? Do they not know fear? Do they not realise that the protest group hadn't even begun its direct action campaign? In particular, the "let's try and get a bike on a FirstBus bus" event was going to be hilarious, a proposal to show that the claim that BRT+bikes could be combined wouldn't work by having everyone try and get their bike onto buses all round Bristol. Then cycle to the next stop ahead of the bike and try again. Some of us were looking forward to this.

Prince Street Bridge

Here is the long promised Princes Street bridge improvements, giving us a chance to offer some Copenhagen Chic-style photos of bicycles.

First, a lovely shot of a woman with a child on the back, heading straight for another woman on a bike, who is shouting "Sorry! No brakes", as they have a near head-on collision.

Looking the other way, here is a bike going with the traffic and hitting the pedestrian/bike shared zone at full "road" speed. There are some pedestrians in the roadward part of this, so the bike is having to swerve round them. If they had been a few metres further along, more emergency measures would be needed.

Here is the exit of the bridge looking northward. By only parking in half the ASL, the taxi is providing room for bikes, but that is irrelevant, because the southbound bike is actually in this lane heading towards us. If I'd been heading north at speed without lights, I would have hit them at the narrow point.

And here is a bike cutting across the oncoming traffic before banking hard to get into the bike lane. Luckily the Focus isn't hitting the cobbles that hard, and there is nobody coming on the bike section.

No, it isn't too early to say "told you so", only that it is fairly chaotic. Vaguely reminiscent of a level crossing in india -it will be great to see what happens on a bridge swing.

1. The entry and exit needs to be wider, so that 2 lanes of bike traffic and/or pedestrians can be accommodated
2. people need to get used to it.

It looks like a fair few cyclists are swinging into the cycle path for the southbound stretch, trading off two road crossings for a time saving. To minimise danger on the road crossings they are going sooner rather than later, so the bike lane has become a contraflow. The narrow entry points/exit points create problems for bikes; conflict with pedestrians will happen in the middle.

Victory over Eastasia will soon be ours! Your chocolate ration has been increased to 35g/week to celebrate!

Cumberland Road Detours

Cumberland road is closed -emergency repairs to keep it out the river. Good thing this happens before BRT routes go in on top of it.

We are fortunate here to have an ever-growing set of correspondents, and are grateful for some pics from "Q" of the consequences.

I've been vastly amused (I work down there) at the number of vehicles that have ignored the road closed signs, driven half way along it, and then had to turn around because it really was closed. Not a problem on a bicycle, though.

The cars are being diverted over Princes Street Bridge and then into the centre, which leads to a followon problem. How to get to the centre. Clearly the scale of the emergency is such that cars are being forced to use the buses only route, such as this car W932GSO appears to be doing

As our correspondent says

One knock-on effect, however, was that the traffic queue at the Marsh Street/Baldwin Street lights was slightly longer than usual, resulting in some interesting attempts by motorists to pretend to be cyclists instead and mix it with the busses on the centre. This chap was really given a hard time by First's Finest who really made him wait!.

Clearly these emergency roadworks on Cumberland Road, scheduled during a weekday, are a sign of how anti car Bristol is.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

News from the Ministry of Truth (Bristol Section)

This site welcomes contributions from all participants in the Bristol Travel area, and today we are pleased to have a contribution from the Bristol Council section of the Ministry of Truth, here to bring us some current news.

1. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Anyone who believes the enemy was at one time Eurasia is mistaken and should report themselves to their nearest Ministry of Truth office for correctional measures. It is only by struggling with our Eurasian allies that victory over the Eastasian animals will be achieved!
2. The chocolate ration will be increased from 60g/week to 40g/week!
3. The single pedestrian crossing on the Princes Street Bridge will be widened, along with a lane for bicycles to get past. This reduction of car traffic from two lanes to one lane is necessary part of the Bristol Cycling City Initiative.

Anyone who believes that there are in fact two narrow pedestrian footpaths on this bridge is a thought criminal.

Anyone who proclaims differently in public is guilty of spreading malicious propaganda against the city.

Anyone who claims that the proposed Princes Street changes are necessary to permit Bus Rapid Transit bendy-buses to get over the bridge without spending money on new bridges is repeating untruths.

Anyone who believes that the announcement was phrased the way it was to put the blame on cyclists or to redirect Cycle City funding towards BRT development is misguided. Please report such subversives to the truth maintenance committee at the council.

Thank you for your co-operation. Ministry of Truth (Bristol Section)